Sam Lipsyte is another author I’m happy to have discovered this year, whose writing is also very funny and often ridiculous, therefore, shockingly real. His novel, The Ask, is fantastic, and easily one of the best books I read in 2010. His skill lies in the inclusion of achingly beautiful sentences and turns of phrase into profane and often silly situations.
The Ask is satirical and clever, but never mean or without heart (The UK cover is above–it’s much more attractive than its US counterpart…). A glimpse into what Lipsyte can do:
The privileged of our generation did what they could, like the rest of us. We were stuck between meanings. Or we were the last dribbles of something. It was hard to figure. The fall of the Soviet Union, this was, the death of analog. The beginning of aggressively marketed nachos.
He also recently published a story in The New Yorker, which can be read online.
“The Dungeon Master” is sort of, kind of about D&D and growing up.
Filed under: Books, Words | Tags: Books, Fiction, George Saunders, Stories, The New Yorker
One of my favorite endeavors of 2010 has been delving into the stories of George Saunders. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t find his work earlier, but this year I read his three collections, Pastoralia, CivilWarLand In Bad Decline, and In Persuasion Nation (in that order). Most of his stories are build on some strange, vague premise, absurd and funny and often unsettling. But Saunders’ power lies in his ability to create these absurd circumstances and, just when you’re getting your footing, take a powerfully human turn that is usually packed with startlingly authentic emotion and power. Most of the time, these turns are shocking, especially when they are in stories about extreme reality shows, unnecessary inventions, strange theme parks, ghosts, and television commercials. Yet he draws so much humanity out of such ridiculous circumstances.
In a recent interview with The New Yorker’s blog, The Book Bench, Saunders touches on this skill of his:
If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he’s made of sugar.
Are people made of sugar? Is it raining? How often does a guy get cut in half on his birthday? Still, the story about the sugar-guy being cut in half on his birthday in the rain is not saying: this happens. It is saying, If this happened, what would that be like? Its subject becomes, say, undeserved misery—which does happen. We know that, we feel it. And maybe (the argument goes) it was necessary to make this exaggerated sugar-guy and cut him in half in order to remind ourselves, at sufficient volume, that undeserved misery exists—to sort of rarify and present that feeling so we might feel it anew.
Read the fantastic new story, “Escape From Spiderhead” from a recent New Yorker, here.
The New York Times has a nice write up on John Updike’s fantastic Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu–his 64-page essay on the final game of Ted Williams. It’s a fast, easy read and includes and essay on the essay, which is heralded for changing the face of sports writing as we know it. From the NYT article:
It’s not too much to say that “Hub Fans” changed sportswriting. Affectionately mocking the tradition of sports clichés (as in the title, which didn’t actually appear in any of Boston’s seven dailies at the time, but easily could have), the essay demonstrated that you could write about baseball, of all things, in a way that was personal, intelligent, even lyrical. Updike compares Williams to Achilles, to a Calder mobile, to Donatello’s David, standing on third base as if the bag were the head of Goliath.
and
What beckoned was the heroic example of Williams. He wrote: “For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill.” And reading “Hub Fans,” you even sense at times a hint of self-identification. Williams and Updike were physically alike. They were tall and slender, with exceptional eyesight. (This was literally so for Williams, and metaphorically true for Updike, who, as the essay demonstrates, was an uncanny observer.)
Read the full article here, and buy the book at a real-live book store, if you’d like. Highly recommended.
Big thanks to The New Yorker for posting a brand new story by Wells Tower, “The Landlord.” His collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, is fantastic and highly recommended.
So far, I’m enjoying Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom much more than I enjoyed The Corrections. While his previous novel was huge and solid, it seemed like his disdain for his characters and his encyclopedic showmanship outweighed his skill. The new one dials back both of these characteristics, to great effect. I still have a ways to go, though…
Filed under: Books, Sports, Words | Tags: Book Review, Fourth Grade, Hall Of Fame, Jerry Rice
Today, the great Jerry Rice will be inducted into the Professional Football Hall Of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In honor of Rice’s legendary career, I’ve decided to post, in full, my review of the book, Jerry Rice: Touchdown Talent, by J. Edward Evans.
[Written for my fourth grade book report]:
Jerry Lee Rice was born on October 13, 1962 in Starkville, Mississippi. As a boy, Jerry worked as a bricklayer in the summertime. In college, he was so good that they retired his number (88). In the NFL draft, the Dallas Cowboys’ head coach wanted Rice. So 49ers head coach Bill Walsh gave New England an offer that they couldn’t resist. So the 49ers drafted Jerry. Rice wasn’t good right away. In fact, in his rookie year he was terrible! Just a little time and practice made Rice one of the best receivers in the National Football League!
I think this book is very good because it tells all about Jerry Rice’s life. It even has stats in the back. Also great pictures. I’d recommend this book to anybody who likes sports.
But don’t take my word for it.
Filed under: Books | Tags: Book Trailer, Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
This is a Book Trailer:
Note: James Franco really was his student at Columbia (recently), which is weird. But Freaks And Geeks was great, so…
This is an interview in which Gary Shteyngart says the Pacific Northwest will be the last place on Earth that people read books: via NPR’s Fresh Air.
Something painfully time consuming, but truly rewarding, has been brought to my attention. Enormous thanks are in order for Biblioklept, who posted a link to the archive of William Faulkner lectures from his time as writer-in-residence at University of Virginia. There is an incredible wealth of lectures, readings, and Q&As available here (audio and transcripts). Enjoy.
I’ve read (and enjoyed) a few Pulitzer Prize winning novels, so the slim 2010 winner, Tinkers, was an easy purchase to make. Previous winners include The Brief And Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, The Road, The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay, and American Pastoral. Faulkner got two, Steinbeck got one, and To Kill A Mockingbird got it, too—a decent track record.
And it was a great decision. Paul Harding writes in a lush stream-of-consciousness style most of the time, and in the right reading mindset, the book is a rewarding meditation on life and death and time (though it’s nowhere near as affecting as the stream-of-consciousness work on time that Faulkner did in The Sound And The Fury). The more traditional elements of the story include three generations of men who struggle with control, who run away, and who relish solitude.
Harding lets the line out during these moments of solitude and lets the minds of the characters (as well as his writing) roam free. Here’s a lovely example:
And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.
It’s a relatively quick read and extremely rewarding. I highly recommend it. I think the next Pulitzer winner I’ll read will be The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004′s winner).
Filed under: Books, Movies, Music | Tags: I'm Here, Kanye West, Light Boxes, Shane Jones, Spike Jonze
Light Boxes is a fairy tale, I suppose. It’s magical realism, it’s post-modern. It’s strange and haunting, and one page features a list that includes “MySpace” and “Lite-Brite” and “Charles Schluz.” Some words are printed extra-large, some are printed extra-small. There are several lists and several narrators. Some pages barely have anything printed on them at all.
And all of this seems to stack up against Shane Jones in his debut novel, but he manages to pull it off with whimsy, grace, and brevity. Much of the book reads like a prose poem or a children’s story, yet Jones taps into the world of sadness and melancholy with precision and grace. The story centers on a small town that has been haunted by February for hundreds of days. The people have all but forgotten other seasons. February, personified, has outlawed flying things—birds walk and balloons (a central image) are grounded. A secret society, shrouded in bird masks, calls itself the Solution and plans on defeating February. They adopt the protagonist, Thaddeus, who eventually loses his wife and daughter to February, and later his own sanity. There’s a giant woodsman with a foul mouth. There are priests with axes. There’s a professor.
Near the end, February is presented as simply a sad, misled romantic. His wife is fed up with his dirty t-shirts and unkempt beard, his lack of transportation and his lack of direction. It would not have been shocking or out of place if Jones had mentioned his record collection and his predilection for lackadaisical veganism. Later, a note found in his pocket reads, “I wanted to write you a story about magic…It turned out to be nothing but sadness, war, heartbreak. You never saw it, but there’s a garden inside me.” These revelations place February as a tragic figure whose good intentions have gone dreadfully awry, which is a fresh turn in this fairy tale that seems perfect for hipsters and post-hipsters, alike.
Again, all this seems a bit much, and you’d expect Light Boxes to crumble under its own weight, but Jones is skilled enough to pull it off. It’s primed for dissection and will probably grow in popularity because Spike Jonze has purchased the film rights. Yes, that Spike Jonze. And it’s set up well—lines like “I vomit ice cubes,” images like bodies being hung inside tree trunks and filled with snow, ghosts, children living underground, and holes in the sky, are all evocative and affective. Who else but Spike Jonze (if not Michel Gondry or Wes Anderson) could adapt this? It seems tailor made for the current detached generation, struggling to leave childhood behind. There’s no word on when the film adaptation will be produced or released, but it would be a fine follow-up, thematically, to Where The Wild Things Are, his recent short film about robots in love (I’m Here), and his bafflingly odd Kanye West video (ten minutes that culminate with Kanye spewing flower petals and removing a tiny little monster from his torso). So, there’s that.
Read a much more thorough and better-written review of Light Boxes at Quarterly Conversation.
Watch the trailer for Spike Jonze’s I’m Here, or the film in its entirety at the official site:
http://www.imheremovie.com/
Buy I’m Here, with a book of photos, interviews, ect, the film on DVD, and an original soundtrack on CD, all bundled up together by the fine folks at McSweeney’s.
Watch the Jonze-directed Kanye West clip here. If you haven’t seen it, make sure you stick around ’til the end.
